Activate The Ravagers Ep1v2

by Alex Albrinck

  Stephen didn’t know, and couldn’t know, that her efforts were made to protect him—and their countrymen—from whatever evil the East had planned. He knew only that his wife was overworked. “I know I’ve been working too much lately, Stephen, and it’s been hard on you. I can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve provided. I want this project to end as badly as anyone, because it means I’ll have more time to spend with you again.” She offered a smile. “We have some work to do ourselves, don’t we?”

  They’d been together just over a year, and societal pressure meant they ought to start having children soon. She wanted that. But with the fate of the world in her hands, she wanted to wait until her focus could more naturally fall back upon her husband and future children, rather than analysis meant to decipher plans to kill all of them.

  He stared at her. “You think that’s why I’m upset? Because you’re not pregnant yet?” He laughed without humor. “Oh, the irony. You really do think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

  She held up her hands, exasperated. “I don’t think you’re a fool, Stephen. Why do you keep saying that?”

  His face turned stony. “Your boyfriend texted you while you were sleeping.” He threw the phone at her.

  She whipped her hand up just before the phone hit her in the face, staring at him.

  He stared back, jaw open. Oops. She wasn’t active duty, but they’d required quite of a bit of physical activity and weapons training, including various fighting methods. At some point she’d developed solid reflexes.

  She glanced down at the phone. Who had texted her and left her husband the impression that she had a boyfriend?

  Someone knows what we did, and is making an effort to destroy us. Make any excuse necessary, but get to me as soon as you are able. Micah.

  They’d emptied the contents of the coffin inside the giant underground tank. The General hadn’t seemed surprised at all when an oozing black substance that resembled mold poured out. She’d asked him how mold could destroy a massive building, but he wouldn’t answer her question. His text could only refer to the fact that they’d moved the material to hidden storage. Someone had found out, and was trying to destroy them. He needed to see her, to provide her with more information, to get a second opinion on what the new information meant.

  She looked up at Stephen’s face, contorted in anger, and then reread the message.

  Oh, shit.

  To Stephen, who knew only that his wife hadn’t made it home before curfew, who knew only that his wife had been working on a secret project for several months, the text message meant only one thing. She’d been having an affair with someone named Micah, who’d texted her to report they’d been discovered and that he needed to see her, likely to coordinate stories to offset the claims.

  And she couldn’t fault his interpretation at all.

  That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to correct his understanding, at least to a point.

  “Stephen, this message was badly written. There’s nothing going on.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Sheila. I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re acting pretty stupid!” she snapped, a response she instantly regretted. “Look, I know that message looks bad. But it’s solely related to work. Actual work.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said, his voice menacing. “And what is it that someone knows that you did and wants to destroy you?”

  “It means we found the problem, Stephen, but it wasn’t just a mistake or a procedural error.” Why did the lie come so easily? “It was purposeful, done to hide a greater fraud. Several of the principle owners of the firm have been bilking credits and hiding it with fictional accounting entries. Micah—my boss—was concerned once we realized what was happening. It’s a lot of money, Stephen. Enough that he feared personal repercussions. We started working on a stack of documentation to take to the authorities, but we ran out of time last night. His text message suggests that those men have learned we cracked the code.” She turned the phone so the screen faced him and pointed at the text. “They’ll try to destroy us, Stephen. That’s why he needs me to get to the office quickly. We need to get the information to the authorities before those men get to us.”

  It occurred to her that she’d never denied having an affair in her entire speech.

  He studied her face for several moments before finally shaking his head. “You used to look me in the eye when you talked to me, Sheila, before you decided to start living a lie. I don’t know who this Micah character is, but I promise you this: if I ever find the man who’s sleeping with my wife, this Micah? I’ll break his neck with my bare hands.”

  He turned and headed out of the room, leaving her slack jawed. “And don’t think this is over, Sheila. I’d stay and talk. But some of us have to go to do work that requires us to remain vertical.”

  “You bastard,” she whispered. She threw the phone after him without thinking.

  But he was already out of the room when the phone hit the door frame and shattered. Moments later, she heard the door to their apartment open and close, and she knew he’d left.

  Well, that was a brilliant start to the day.

  She stood rooted to the spot for several minutes, wondering why the General had signed his text message with his given name. Most texts he wrote were coded and signed as MJ or GMJ, specifically to avoid incidents like what she’d just experienced should the texts be intercepted. She could only think of one explanation. Something had happened while she slept, and it wasn’t minor. If the General was so deeply unnerved by what he’d found that he’d made a mistake like that text…?

  She shivered.

  With Stephen gone—or possibly waiting outside the apartment building to see where she went—she decided to head to the office. She showered and donned her most conservative business suit before heading to the elevator and down to the parking garage.

  Private motorcars had been a fixture in her cityplex her entire life, given the sheer size of the space inside the walls. She knew that other cityplexes used larger shared vehicles that ran between defined points in the city at specified times, and found that odd and lacking in travel flexibility. She slid behind the wheel of her car and maneuvered through the streets until she reached the entry to the Northwest Spur, the road carrying her beyond the official cityplex limits and into the Hinterlands. The spur was walled for several miles into the dangerous and uninhabited territory beyond the plex, and she drove until she reached the office building housing Jamison & Associates.

  She pulled up to the parking garage barrier and fumbled in her bag for her badge. They used the same badge for true Jamison & Associates employees like Jocelyn Whitfield as they did for those who worked underground, which prevented awkward questions when the two groups mingled. She found the badge and swiped it, watched the light turn green, and listened as the barrier lifted. She drove through, wondering why they bothered barricading the entry to the parking garage when no one but employees and clients had reason to use the facility.

  Or was the barrier there to keep them in?

  She pondered that mystery as she drove to her parking spot on the lowest level of the garage, gathered her belongings into her bag—including the pieces of her broken phone—and headed for the door into the facility. She’d brought the phone with her on a whim, wondering if one of the more technical people might be able to repair the device. She thought a new screen might do it, though the other parts would certainly need testing.

  She swiped her badge at the entry, waited for the green light, and pulled the heavy metal door open. The door slammed closed behind her. She strode across the landing to the door on the far side, the door which led up to the primary offices, and swiped her badge again, waiting for the badge reader to signal as she wondered what else could go wrong this day.

  The locks on both doors engaged, the lights went out, and the floor dropped out from beneath her as she screamed.

  fifteen

  Deirdre Silver-Light

  …Dias
teel announced the formation of a “Department of Research and Development” to be led by Silver’s only child, Deirdre, an aspiring model and fashion mogul… met with initial jeers and cries of nepotism, but most objective accounts show Ms. Silver as possessed of a business mind to rival that of her legendary father…

  The History of the Western Alliance, page 4242

  Deirdre sat at her desk, staring into space over fingers steepled before her face. She could feel the strain and fatigue around her eyes, and massaged her temples. She opened her eyes and took in the eclectic artwork hanging upon her office walls, finding expression of her swirl of emotions in the quirky colors and shapes marking the collection of framed canvases.

  She’d activated one of the caches, privately hoping she’d botched the job. She tried to convince herself that if she’d improperly activated the weapon and it failed to detonate, she’d bear less guilt in the events to come.

  The effort to assuage her guilt failed.

  She instead turned her focus to her husband. Roddy had been a dream come true, a man who appreciated her mind as well as her body, and they’d been inseparable since they’d first met. He was a man heavily damaged by the horrors he’d suffered during his military stint, activity she could fathom solely because of her access to information even Roddy hadn’t seen. They were two dominant, passionate personalities drawn to each other by a gravitational pull neither could resist.

  Until this morning.

  She’d all but thrown herself at him and he’d resisted. That had never happened before. She could sense the powerful desire she’d unleashed in him… and still he’d turned her down.

  Something was wrong.

  She lacked Roddy’s innate ability to read people. His initial perceptions of people proved incredibly accurate, and she’d never seen anyone get away with telling a lie to him. In even the cases she thought he’d been tricked, he’d later revealed that he’d allowed the lie to go unchallenged because he’d considered it to be to his advantage.

  He’d offered no indication that he’d known she’d been hiding something major from him for the entirety of their relationship. It certainly wasn’t personal; she hid that part of her life from everyone. Except her father. She’d done her job well if Roddy hadn’t noticed until now. Was that the issue? He’d realized her stories of challenging projects were a cover for something deeper, something more sinister, and his conscience kept him from her as he tried to understand exactly what she’d been hiding.

  She’d not tell her father her suspicions, that Roddy had deciphered their behaviors and understood there was something coming, something big, something… decidedly unpleasant. Where she would worry about Roddy derailing things in a way she never could, where she’d even feel a sense of pride that her husband had cracked the mystery… Oswald would see a threat.

  Roddy, resourceful though he might be, wouldn’t survive Oswald’s mild discomfort.

  She wondered if she ought to go to Roddy now, tell him everything, and see if he could stop events at this late hour. Oswald told her it was impossible. She’d accepted that assessment and had done the part she’d agreed to perform. Roddy wouldn’t, though. Roddy would find a way. In fact, she would call him—

  She jumped at the sound of the knock at the door, breathing heavily as her pulse raced. She took a quick breath to steady herself as she looked at the clock. It was time to meet with her chief researcher. “Come in,” she called. Her voice was firm and authoritative.

  Her chief researcher entered the room, and she caught her breath. He reminded her of Roddy in his ability to dominate a room with his mere presence. Where Roddy’s presence derived from his physical prowess and intensity, this man exuded a powerful aura of charm and charisma.

  He favored her with a radiant smile. “Mrs. Light. I do hope I’m not late.”

  She shook her head, hoping the movement might distort the temporary flush in her cheeks. “Punctual, as always.”

  He closed the door behind him. Deirdre opened the top drawer of her desk and found the two separate grooves that matched the shape of her index fingers and place the pads of her fingers in the grooves.

  Moments later, the bookshelf to her right shifted, and she heard the faint sound of locks disengaging.

  Books older than current history lined those shelves, a fact few people knew. Most believed her collection to be one of pure aesthetics, a reminder to think of the reputed accomplishments of the ancients and seek similar advances. While she appreciated the symbolism—and encouraged the speculation—the books were in fact copies of the physical, paper books once popular on the planet. The words within were lifted directly from a publicly redacted library found in the Time Capsule. Here, on her wall, sat proof of the conspiracy blocking full distribution of the Time Capsule’s secrets.

  No one paid attention, though. Roddy had paused once, ran a finger down the weathered spines, before turning away. Secrets were best hidden in the open where seekers never looked.

  Sheila moved to the bookshelf, joined by her researcher. She put her hands on two separate books on an upper shelf, as far as she could reach, and pulled both toward her simultaneously. The floor moved, sliding to her right, as the shelf separated from the larger office wall, spinning them at a steady pace to a point behind the wall. Were anyone to enter her office at this moment, they’d still see a bookshelf lined with ancient printed books. The titles were identical, save for the two used to activate the rotation. Her father would know her location in an instant.

  The walls and bookshelf were both fully soundproofed, and they entered the large laboratory confident that any noises made inside would never reach the outside world.

  “I’ve tested each of the prototypes as you’ve requested, Mrs. Light.” The man noted charts and checklists affixed to a drafting table near the bookshelf door. “My summary of the results are found there, and the printed binders of the detailed tests and observations may be located on fixed shelves near the entry.”

  She nodded, glancing at the test materials.

  She’d told Roddy a partial truth that morning. Her team had secretly reconstituted the formula for Diasteel, creating a material that retained the strength and impermeable nature of the original while allowing the material to bend. She’d lied when she told him she didn’t know how it might be used.

  The metallic suits rested upon tables, many bearing scorch marks and dents and scratches upon otherwise flawless exteriors. She walked between the rows of tables, looking at each. “Each suit was subjected to fire, acid, explosions, knives, and bullets?”

  He nodded. “Correct. None of them were fully lost, but some fared better than others.”

  That’s what she needed to know. “At least one survived all tests unscathed?”

  “That’s correct as well, Mrs. Light. Would you like to see that sample?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He led her to a different table, filled with suits blackened and dented almost beyond recognition. The suit in the middle of the table was different. A tag labeled “22” served as the only visible blemish in the smooth metallic surface. She ran a hand along the head cover, surprised at the mild chill of the smooth surface. She lifted one of the arms. “How does one get inside?”

  “There’s a zipper down the front.”

  She looked again, and ran her hand down the front of the suit. A small bulge ran from the chin to the legs, and when she tugged, a flap opened, revealing a zipper. “I assume the flap is simple to reapply and ensure a complete seal?”

  He nodded. “The surface is slightly magnetized to itself in just the right places. The flap’s magnetism matches with the opposite polarity in a thin surface wire past the zipper. The simplest way to think of it is that the flap will be pulled to the closed position and held there, barring a very localized bit of pressure.”

  She considered. “So you can’t shoot the flap open, but if you knew what to look for, you might be able to use a knife to pry it open and get to the zipper.”

 
; “Exactly.”

  She pushed to flag down, and watched as it pulled tight over the zipper, forming a solid seal. She nodded. “Perfect. Keep this suit and destroy the others. I’ll need the specific adjustments to the Diasteel formula required to create the suits sent to me.”

  He nodded, but she noticed his hesitancy. “What is it?”

  “It’s just… I can’t help but wonder why we created these suits.”

  She maintained an “I just work here” approach to justifying the research projects, alluding to others deciding what and why they’d investigate new technologies or alterations to existing technologies. But his efforts demanded a partial explanation. “It’s for our military, of course.” Not quite true. But… close.

  His eyes widened. “Military? But… why?”

  “Well, if enemy soldiers shoot at our soldiers…”

  He grimaced. “Right.” He paused. “You mentioned destroying the other suits.”

  “Correct.”

  “How?”

  “What?”

  “Those suits have been thrown in fire, shot with bullets, stabbed with knives, drowned in acid, and while they suffered some structural damage, all of them are still here.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t destroy something that was built to resist destruction.”

  She nodded. “Each suit had a specific weakness, right? One challenge that caused the structural damage we didn’t see in the final suit?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “Is there a reason you couldn’t match suits to the challenges they failed and subject them to more of the same until they’re destroyed?”

  He shook his head. “We start the Cobra project on Monday. If I’m the only person with access to destroy the failed suits, it will take several weeks.”